


a beautiful thing

by plinys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Anxiety Attacks, Clones, Episode Tag, F/F, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 22:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14122074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: Careful and precise, 'mechanically' a traitorous voice in her head supplies helplessly.(Or five times Ava felt that she wasn't "real")(An episode tag for "I, Ava")





	a beautiful thing

 

1

She leaves the Waverider behind because even though Sara had offered her a place to stay - a spare bunk, not  _ her  _ room, not the only place Ava would even consider wanting to be - she needed to go back to a place that felt like home.

At least, that was what she had told herself.

The alcohol burning through her system making it all hurt a little less, the same way she had been coping with the last week, though then she had been drinking to forget Sara and now…

Now she was drinking to forget herself. 

It doesn’t work. 

Not now that she’s here, back in a home that she used to find comforting. The house she picked out all on her own after being recruited, that she had kept through all of her years at the Time Bureau, that she had once spent careful hours unboxing momentos from home and carryovers from previous cities and jobs, slowly decorating this place to be her escape.

Momentos now that Ava could only focus on with a sort of blurry disappointment. Her eyes stinging from the tears that somehow seem to keep coming even when she’s thought that she had cried them all out. A photo from her  _ childhood _ of a trip she’d taken a summer long ago with her parents - no, it was a summer that didn’t really exist, a little girl that wasn’t really her, and actors that had been paid enough money to smile and pretend that Ava was a real person. 

To pretend that she - that  _ they  _ -

Ava grabs the frame off the end table, grabs the whole lot of them, stacking them up in her arms, a bunch of photoshopped pictures of a life that she never lived, only hesitating over one - a photo from her early days with the Time Bureau. 

Surely,  _ that  _ had to be real. 

Surely,  _ that  _ had to actually be her and not another manufactured memory. 

She can’t do it. Can’t bring herself to throw all the pictures away. To smash the little mementos of a life that has never truly been her own. Even though she wants to, even though she deserves to have this much control at the very least.

Throwing it all away and starting again feels too much like admitting the truth that she is now all too aware of. 

The truth of who she is. 

Of  _ what  _ she is.

The photo frames end up on her couch, abandoned as she moves through her apartment. Numb like a stranger in a space that no longer belongs to her. Stocking feet leading her to a bedroom that’s always neat and well kept. 

100% housebroken.

Isn’t that what the sign about her had said.

She felt that now.

Felt it so acutely like an ache in her chest.

She undresses slowly, with precision, making certain to fold each layer of her clothing as she does. Careful and precise,  _ mechanically  _ a traitorous voice in her head supplies helplessly, almost  _ robotically _ .

There’s a mirror by her bedroom door, a mirror that when Ava has stripped down to her undergarments, she finds herself standing in front of. She’s always avoided her expression before. A quick look to put on makeup or to make sure that her suit was adjusted right.

The last time she had stood in front of this mirror looking so intently at her reflection was before her date with Sara, in that dress that had made her feel so insecure.

_ Insecure _ .

What fool would choose to make a clone with insecurities, with anxiety, with so much self-doubt that Ava had made herself sick over it too many times to count.

Hadn’t that sign called her the  _ perfect woman,  _ all the best DNA put together to make her, and yet, as Ava stares in the mirror, all she can see is the same familiar flaws. 

The doubts that had always been there. That she’s too tall, that her hands are too big to have ever been consider delicate, that there’s too many scars marking her skin, that her stomach isn’t nearly toned enough, that she -

It gets hard to focus on her expression. The tears coming again. Blurring the reflection of herself.

Blurring the image of a body that wasn’t unique. 

That had never been unique.. 

How could someone want this? 

How could someone look at  _ this  _ and see perfection when all Ava ever saw in herself were her flaws?

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t real.

_ She  _ wasn’t real. 

She’ll blame the alcohol when her stomach turns a minute later, try to pretend that the bitter bile that rises up is caused by Sara’s scotch and not by her own overwhelming insecurities. It’s not true, but then again, what part of her really is?

  
  
  


2

They’re starting again. Starting over. Trying to be  _ normal  _ even though neither of them have ever been anything close to the word. 

It’s a date.

Another first date.

With the only woman that Ava ever wants to go on a date with again. 

There’s no fancy restaurant this time, no dress that doesn’t fit right, no Legends to interrupt them and take away any stable footing that Ava might have thought that she had had. 

Instead it’s just the two of them, at a small hole in the wall ice cream place. Ava with a respectable bowl of mint chip, whereas Sara had some sort of monstrosity that she think originally started as rainbow sherbet ice cream, but was too covered in topping for Ava to be entirely sure. 

“That can’t actually taste good,” Ava says, gesturing at Sara’s bowl, a look of mild disgust on her face as she does so.

Sara just grins back at her like a fool. “Frozen gummy worms are the best food in the world, and that’s just facts, Aves.”

Ava would be lying if she denied the butterflies that found home in her stomach at the sight of Sara smiling at her like that. This was love, a feeling that she couldn’t deny, that was so overwhelming that it was hard to even begin to think about anything else.

That made it hard to remember all the ways that she had been hurting recently.

Which is probably why she’s not thinking about it, which is probably why the words slip out, suddenly and without thought, “When I was fifth grade, we had this competition to see who could eat the most gummy worms and I-” she stops when her brain catches up with her mouth. 

The story.

The memory.

It all falls away at once. 

Because she was never in fifth grade, she never made herself so sick eating candy that she swore it all off for years to come, she never hid out in the locker room instead of going to the nurse’s office unwilling to call home and tell her parents that she’d been unable to back down from a challenge, she’d never even  _ had  _ parents. 

She hates herself just a little bit when the tears start to come, choking up, making her feel like she was drowning, like she might never reach the surface.

A part of her thinks that she might like that,  _ drowning _ , at least then it would be real. Or maybe not. Maybe some preprogrammed instinct for self-preservation would kick in and -

“Ava, baby,” Sara’s voice cuts sharply through Ava’s rising panic attack. 

The fog in Ava’s head clearing for just a moment, to remember where she was, and who she was with.

To remember that she was supposed to be here, on a date, with Sara, trying to start over. 

Only now she was here, crying in the middle of an ice cream shop, making a fool of herself.

Ava scrubs at her cheeks, desperate to brush away the wetness that is gathering there, only stopping when Sara’s hand reaches across the table to take hers. Pressing just lightly, holding Ava together with the lightest of touches. 

“I’m sorry,” Ava says suddenly. “I’m so sorry, fuck, I’m ruining all of this.”

“No,” Sara insists. “No, you’re not.”

She sounds so sincere that Ava wants to believe her so desperately. 

But she can’t.

She can’t believe much of anything anymore.

“I am,” Ava insists. “I’m the one telling stories of things that aren’t even  _ real _ , I’m the one that’s not-”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Sara says sharply cutting her off.

Right.

Of course.

Sara wouldn’t want to be reminded of this cruel fact.

Sara wouldn’t want to be dating someone that wasn’t  _ real _ . 

Maybe if Sara could pretend, then Ava could too. Just for a moment. Just here on this date where they were both pretending to be normal people. 

“I’m sorry,” Ava says again, softly spoken, the only words she can bring herself to say. 

Sara’s got a soft sad smile on her face, and Ava focuses pointedly back down on her bowl of ice cream instead of on the woman right in front of her. The woman that knows the truth about her and yet for some reason is still here, pretending that everything is okay, that she could still love Ava in spite of all of that. 

“We’re going to make new memories,” Sara insists, rubbing her thumb softly over the back of Ava’s hand, “Real ones, me and you, I promise.” 

If Ava tries hard enough, she can almost believe Sara.

She can almost pretend that this is normal too. 

  
  
  


3

It’s a joke.

She knows it’s a joke. 

She remembers being in their shoes. Making comments under her breath about how a strong wind could knock Director Hunter down or how Director Bennett had been too old and set in his ways to see logic. People talked trash about their bosses, it was human nature, and Ava could not fault them for that. 

Not really. 

Not even when the comment was so offhanded and yet personal that it cut through every one of Ava’s carefully constructed mental walls.

_ You’d think she was a robot _ , one of the agents had said. A joke muttered under his breath, meant for only the agents close to him to hear. A private joke between the group of them about the Director that was too serious for her own good. Not realizing, not knowing, how close they had come to hitting the mark. 

She knows that she is not the only one that had heard it by mistake, she catches a concerned look in Gary’s eyes, and  _ that  _ is something that she doesn’t need.

He follows her when she turns out of the room. 

“Director Sharpe-”

“I want to be alone,” Ava says, probably a bit too harshly, but it does give her the space that she needs.

She doesn’t run back to her office, but it’s a near thing. Walking at a pace brisk enough that other agents step out of the way, not willing to get in the path of Director Sharpe on a mission.

Even if that mission is just to get to the safety of her office, and turn her glass walls opaque. 

The tears start to fall before the walls even fully solidify into that cloudy grey, Ava unable to stop them as she slumps down in her office chair, her hands coming up to hide her face even though there’s nobody there to be hiding from.

She hates this, hates that some offhand comment, a joke made by people that don’t even really know her, has the ability to bring her to this point so quickly. She tries to push past the tears, tries to focus on the room around her, the clutter on her desk.. Papers that she needs to sign. A bronze nameplate reading out her title as director. A silly trinket that Sara had stolen for her on some dreadful Legends mission as an apology for messing up time a little more. An empty coffee cup that she needs to toss in the trash. A pile of unopened mail with a letter opener next to it.

Her eyes linger on the letter opener for a moment.

Decorative mostly.

A little gift to herself that had made her feel just a bit posh, the sort of thing that she had bought because it seemed suitable for the  _ Director  _ of the Time Bureau to have one.

Only now she was looking at it with a completely different thought.

A terrible impulse to pick up the knife, to cut herself open, and prove that there’s no wires on the inside, that she’s made up of flesh and blood.

Cloned flesh.

Fabricated blood.

Yet, another part of her that was fake. 

She wants to do it. Reaches for the letter opener, even though her hands are shaking, because there’s a part of her that is aching. A part of her that needs to find some sort of proof that she is real.

Though she never lays a finger on it.

Instead, she jerks her head up, pulling her hand back towards her chest away from that terrible temptation, at the sound of a time portal opening in the middle of her office. There was only  _ one  _ person, other than herself, with this particular location not restricted. 

“Sara? What are you doing here?”

Sara is dressed in some sort of costume, clearly pulled straight from a Legends mission, and Ava would feel worse about that, if she didn’t need her here. So desperately. Didn’t need Sara there, crossing the room to her, pulling Ava into a hug that she clings onto desperately with hands that are still shaking. 

“I missed you,” Sara says.

But Ava can read through the lines. She can imagine what must have gone down, how that worried look in Gary’s eyes must have led to him running to the Legends. She wishes she felt less happy about this turn of events. Wish she could do all of this without the comfort of Sara right there before her.

She doesn’t point out the fact that Sara is lying.

Doesn’t dare shatter the illusion of normality. 

Instead she just says, “I missed you too.”

  
  
  


4

She wakes suddenly from a nightmare, heart pounding in her chest, memories of a world full of people that looked just like her, feeling lonely in a crowd full of creatures just like her. 

Her stomach turns, as it’s been known to do lately, and Ava is up out of the bed with haste. Taking the familiar path from her bedroom to the bathroom, and expelling whatever it is that she had been drinking the night before.

A bottle of wine that she had shared on her couch with Sara, before they’d turned to the pineapple rum. 

She tells herself that the sick feeling is from the alcohol. The same thing that she’s been telling herself for weeks. Every time the bile rose up her throat and she was unable to stop it. Her eyes burn, tears springing forth, but she tells herself that’s from feeling sick, not from the nightmare that, if she closes her eyes, she swears is forever burned to the back of her eyelids.

When her stomach twists again, and she feels herself turning back to the bowl, she’s shocked suddenly by the feeling of cold hands brushing against the back of her neck before holding her hair back, twisting it up into a messy bun at the back of her head.

So different from the one Ava normally does so precisely every morning before work. 

She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand before turning to Sara. Sara, who is all bare legs and one of Ava’s sleep shirts, who stares at her with concern that makes Ava’s heart clench up. 

“You don’t have to stay here,” Ava says, “You can go back to bed.” 

“I’d just be worrying about you,” Sara points out.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Sara insists. 

Sara watches Ava carefully as she settles down on the edge of Ava’s bathtub, watching her with eyes that make a blush rise up onto the top of Ava’s cheeks. Sara always had a way of doing this. Of seeing right through Ava.

“It’s just from drinking last night,” Ava insists.

Because apparently this was something she could still feel. Miserable and hungover. Apparently nobody had programmed her to prevent that. Or maybe the people that made her had never imagined one of their  _ perfect  _ clones having a need to turn to the bottle. 

Ava’s not sure what answer was better to handle.

“You’re not sick are you,” Sara asks, “I mean, like the flu or something, we could stop by the Waverider and have Gideon check you out?”

“I don’t get sick,” Ava says. 

A true statement.

Something she had always attributed to having inherited an excellent immune system.

Though now she knew it had more to do with programming and genetic modifications than anything innate in her human nature.

Her stomach churns again, and this time when Ava turns to throw up again, she can hear Sara making soft soothing sounds, her voice gentle as she says, “It’s okay, baby, get it all out. That’ll help you feel any better.”

It doesn’t help.

She heaves until it’s nothing more than bile. 

Until she’s crying because her throat burns, and her heart aches, and Ava wonders why her body had to betray her in this way.

Why something made for  _ perfection  _ had to still have this fatal flaw.

“At least we know you’re not pregnant,” Sara says.

Casually flippantly, a joking comment, from a woman that was half asleep.

Meant to lighten the tension in the room.

But suddenly Ava can’t help but freeze. 

She hadn’t thought about it before, hadn’t really had the time to process  _ all  _ the implications of her newly discovered background, but now she was thinking about it. Now it was something that Ava couldn’t help but focus on.

“What if I can’t,” Ava says suddenly, hating how her voice breaks over the words. “What if I can’t because I’m a…”

She can’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

She had never been the type to daydream much about it. Ava had never intended to be the type of woman to get a husband and settle down to raise two point five beautiful children in a house with a white picket fence. Mostly because she wasn’t the husband type.

But there were moments where she imagined settling down with the right woman and having a little girl of their own.

Only now…

“Shit, shit, sorry,” Sara says, suddenly, seeming to come awake fully at once. Realizing the implications of her words. Maybe finally coming to her senses and realizing that Ava was not worth any of her trouble.

Ava wouldn’t blame her if this was the final straw.

“I’m sorry, I’m so-” Ava says, her voice pitching up into that terrible wavering tone. The one that she wishes she had more control over. 

Only to be cut off as Sara settles down on the floor beside her. Pulls Ava close, tight into her chest. A place that Ava is barely certain that she deserves to be, but a space that she melts into all the same. 

She vaguely registers Sara pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

The smallest of comforts.

Instead tries to focus on sound of Sara’s voice, “I mean - I’ve died, multiple times, so I’m probably worse off than you are when it comes to this… But we could adopt and god, Ava, can you imagine you’d make such a good mom, I’d be terrible at it. But you, you’d be so good, the perfect mix of stern and loving.” 

And tries to imagine that there’s still a future filled with happiness out there for her and the woman that holds her tightly. 

  
  
  


5

She matches Sara hit for hit. Bodies moving in tandem, training, fighting, without the need for any real winner. 

Sara’s League of Assassins training versus her… Her programming. 

It hardly seems like a fair fight, and yet they always end up evenly matched.

It’s a good stress relief.

A good way for Ava to get her mind off of work, and all the other awful things that have been cluttering up her mind the last few weeks. 

“You know,” Ava drawls, when they’ve decided to take a water break, “For fighting someone who is basically a murder bot, you’re doing surprisingly well.” 

She’s gotten to the point where she can joke about it. Just little light things. Just here with Sara. It’s a start, moving on the path to accepting things. 

Even if her jokes are bitter and at her own expense.

Even if they leave a terrible taste lingering in her mouth.

“Don’t talk about yourself that way,” Sara says, a soft touch, before she adds in a teasing tone, “If anything, you’re one of the sex bots.” 

She punctates those words by tugging Ava toward her, hands gripping too tight to Ava’s waist, slotting their hips together. And Ava wants that, wants this training session to end like so many others before it have, with Sara commanding Gideon to lock the training room doors, and fucking Ava on the mats beneath their feet. Until the sweat that shines out against their bodies is from sex rather than from fighting. 

But instead, she hesitates. 

Instead she focuses on the tightness that’s sudden in her chest.

Another insecurity that she cannot help but voice. 

“Do you ever think about it,” Ava asks, a soft whisper filled with her own blaring insecurities, the ones she only voices to herself and to Sara. “I mean what sort of people make a  _ clone  _ that can have sex?”

Sara doesn’t pull away from her.

Even though Ava almost wishes that she would.

Even though Ava imagines that she would deserve that.

Instead Sara runs a thumb over the bare skin of her hip, grounding Ava a little with her gentle touch. 

“I try not to think about it,” Sara admits, equally soft.

Making Ava feel terrible for having brought the whole thing up. 

“Right,” Ava says, knowing her voice sounds falsely cheerful even to her own ears, “Right, let’s just forget about it.”

“Ava-”

She kisses Sara, kisses her to silence that concerned tone, kisses her until she forgets about anything other than what it feels like to kiss Sara. 

  
  
  
  


+1

There’s something easy about this. The soft domesticity of an early morning, of Sara here in Ava’s bed, the sunlight streaming in from her windows, casting a faint glow over her.

Over the woman that Ava loves.

She loves her.

Truly does.

The one feeling that Ava cannot deny.

The one that feels the most real, the love that consumes her and overwhelms her at times, and can only and truly belong to Ava. She wasn’t programmed for this. Wasn’t picked up from a future time to fall in love with Sara Lance, and yet somehow, in spite of everything that tried to keep them apart, she had.

She loves her.

So much that in the light of the morning, Ava can forget about everything other than being in love with her. 

Her,  _ Sara _ , the woman that smiles at her when she notices Ava staring. That laces their fingers together, silent and supportive, there in the quiet of an early morning where they had nothing more to do than to spend the day together. 

“I love you,” Ava says, trying the words out for the very first time.

The words that had been there in her heart for so long, but that she’d been ready to say out loud. Not until now. Not until this very moment. 

Now, she can’t help but say them again.

“I love you, Sara. I love you so much. I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you, and I’ve never stopped loving you, and I don’t want to ever stop loving you. You’re here and I just, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve you, but somehow I got lucky enough to fall in love with you, and I-” 

She can’t keep talking, not once the tears come.

Happy tears for the first time in what feels like forever. 

And Sara, she just smiles at her, with a smile that feels like home, and says, “I love you too.”


End file.
